October 3, 2012

"The infant, a 9.5 pound, 20.4 inch boy, delivered alive and into the toilet. Cassidy lifted the moving infant from the toilet, felt for a pulse, found one, then placed her hands around the infant’s neck and squeezed until he wasn’t moving or breathing any longer."

Cassidy Goodson is 14, and somehow she managed to carry a large baby to term without any adult intervening in what was happening to her. She went through labor alone and actively hiding, and she resorted to the use of scissors to extract the baby. What condition was the baby in at that point? If in pain and alone, she made the terrible choice to strangle a scissor-ripped newborn, is there no pity for this child?

How could you end up so isolated that you would follow this path? No friends, not a single person you could talk to?. The father? There is no mention of how she got pregnant. Do men even exist in between the sex and the child support?

"Some members of the family suspected the teen was pregnant and counseled Teresa Goodson regarding the teen’s changing appearance. During this time, Mrs. Goodson denied her daughter’s pregnancy advising family members that two home pregnancy tests were administered and showed no positive result. Both tests were conducted by the teen, alone and in private, with no parent present in the room at the time, because Mrs. Goodson wanted to protect her daughter’s privacy."

How stupid are this girl's parents? A 5' 3" girl is pregnant with an almost 10 pound baby and she was able to conceal that?

Willful blindness. I see it all the time with some folks. Their kids are out drinking and smoking pot, posting the pictures of it on Instagram, yet the parents just smile, and say, no, my daughter/son would never do that!

I can't imagine what would drive a kid to do this, other than feeling completely alone, unwilling to disappoint her parents, who are too busy with their own lives, I'm sure.

My sympathies lie first with the helpless baby who paid with it's life for the lack of jugement of the other child who didn't think of conseqences & didn't have the courage to get help from someone. It's not like there are not plenty of places these 'children' can go to seek help.

Demonstrating the power of manipulation for us? One post after writing something outrageous and spun to deliberately anger conservatives, you ask for pity for someone violoting one of their most fervent beliefs.

I know none of you are going to say, "but in the cases you are talking about the act takes place in a doctors office." Yes, I can totally see the difference in a living child choked to death and one stabbed to death with a medical instrument.

Good God, that was painful to read. There are so many people who would have given anything to care for her baby.

I know that there's an argument that schools get too involved, but shouldn't someone at the school have at least talked her and made sure that she had family support and medical care, once it became obvious? (and it must have been obvious - I was expecting an overweight girl, and was surprised to see how small she was). Just horrible.

I can't understand how some people can just ignore the absolute heinousness of late term or postpartum abortion which is a euphemism for killing a born human being. I see no difference here, except that this murder actually sounds more human in it's method.

Althouse, by the way, continually provokes herself as much as anybody else. Do you see other pro-choice people blogging about stuff like this? Not really. She continually brings up articles and stories that (should) upset pro-choice people. And she does this even as she is pro-choice. I very much appreciate her intellectual honesty and rigor.

According to this story, the authorities are looking for some adults to charge with something and it's not clear how they will charge the girl. Obviously, it was terrible that the baby died, but this girl found herself in a position where perhaps all she understood was that her body was in great pain and she used her minimal ingenuity to come up with the extraction with scissors. At that point, she probably was looking at a ravaged infant body and perhaps thought in terms of ending his suffering. She had just had a horrible struggle, alone, with her own bodily suffering and now she was confronting another poor, suffering being.

What happened here is not new, nor really has anything to do with politics or abortion. This act has been repeated since the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of human culture.

Today, she had many other choices. Why she chose the worse of all of them could be just low intelligence, lack of awareness, or overwhelming fear, but at 14 it's the people around her that failed here. More than anywhere else, that's where the blame lies.

The gospel lesson for this past Sunday and the coming one both reference children, their vulnerability, the need to protect them.

Cassidy, on some levels, belongs to the adult group who must care for the vulnerable. She failed horribly, murderously, at this task. But there is no doubt that she also belongs to the group of vulnerable children who need the protection of adults. And they, not least her mother, failed her horribly.

"Is there no pity for this child?" Yes there is. For if there is no pity for her, we are all most to be pitied for our hardness of heart.

Initially, i thought you meant the dead baby and my first reaction was, the man you once and will again vote for for president will spare no pity for the child. Then i wondered how ugly that honest and truthful assessment made me look.

But you mean the girl who went through this alone (except for the baby, which i'm sure all the good people understand wasn't a person). Horrible. Horrible now, yesterday, and tomorrow.

The punishment she has earned should be visited upon her parents instead. She should be forgiven and (ideally) brought into a good home that gives her a chance to live a life worth living.

Obviously, only the baby didn't just "die"...he was brutally and calculatedly murdered by his own mother.But we must't be too judgmental, must we?If it had been the baby's father who was there at the birth and who strangled the newborn to death, would you say the the baby just "died"?

She looks younger than 14 as well. She not only carried the baby to term but *gave birth in the house* without her parents knowing? But then mom "cleaned" her room so thoroughly she found the corpse and immediately called the police?

Something isn't quite right about the "facts" in this story.

I don't have an opinion really without more information. Why couldn't she get an abortion earlier? Did she not have access at least to the internet? Is she a nascent little psycho (they exist at that age) in other areas or just immature and stupid? Are either of her parent/s so abusive that she couldn't tell them?

What happened here is not new, nor really has anything to do with politics or abortion.

Yeah yeah, infanticide's not new. Legalizing infanticide, that was new. Or at least a throwback to the pagans. We've replaced the patriarchal baby-killing of Plato and Aristotle with the feminist baby-killing of Blackmun and Ginsburg.

How does sh!t like this happen? Mrs. Goodson lived in a 500 square foot single wide trailer with a pregnant teenage daughter and didn't notice? Didn't care enough to notice, sounds more like it. I don't know if I care what they charge Cassidy with, but I know I'd like to see someone throw the book at her "mother".

I think, in my state the law was changed recently so that if you left a newborn at a medical facility you would *not* be charged with abandonment.Still, people are ignorant of the law, and soon after a mother was arrested after leaving her newborn in a dumpster.Had this been the law in Cassidy's state, and if she were aware of it, would it make a difference?

This is a very heartbreaking story. This girl is either mentally ill or there is some underlying family disfunction.

However, from a political perspective, which I will comment on because this blog is political in nature, abortion is legal in Florida, and requires no parental consent, just notification.

Perhaps the bigger societal problem is not access to abortion or contraception but the acceptance of children of 14 having sex, and the constant message that unborn children are expendable. 14 year old children are typically ill equipped to deal with the consequences of pregnancy. Sex causes pregnancy.

This happened three years into the term of the most pro-abortion president ever. Blame cannot be placed on Romney, the Republicans or Bush, any argument for "keeping abortion legal" is completely pointless in this context.

If she had gone to a hospital a few weeks earlier, a doctor could have legally killed the baby for her. Anyone who is for "partial birth abortion" should find that comforting, I find it goulish,

There is clearly a moral relativism. Abortion Dr. removes unwanted "tissue" that began growing 5 months 31 days ago we celebrate a woman's right to reproductive freedom. That same tissue when born prematurely at the same age is magically transformed into a baby who will spend a few months in the neonatal ICU and if lucky spend the next 20 years or so being nurtured by loving parents. Why must we attach morality to the actions of this child? She was acting under the morality of practicality. She is actually the most mature person in the room, in spite of her 14 years.

How tragic. Popular culture portrays sex as being consequenceless and I believe that young girls feel like they are expected to have sex. But there are consequence like preganancy except that 14 year old girls aren't mature enough to deal with that and I bet that this girl didn't even understand what she was really doing to the baby. I have pity and I would not prosecute her. If she is prosecuted, the father should be prosecuted too as the responsiblity should not be solely hers.

You're being pretty harsh. Cassidy and her mom are just poor and ignorant. So they aren't responsible for their actions. If we gave more money to day-care and schools and health care and job training programs for Cassidy's mom, this would have never happened.

According to the article, she is charged with first degree felony murder, a capital offense. It's very difficult to believe that the prosecutor will stick with that charge, but this being Florida and taking into account the overcharging in the Zimmerman case, I suppose anything is possible if it becomes a political football.

I have an immense degree of pity for Cassidy, who is obviously a victim of child abuse, parental neglect, and of statutory rape. It is terrible that she killed her baby. It is monstrous that people think it is impossible to have compassion for the 14 year old and for her child simultaneously. As a wise man once said, "You ask what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society!"

What in that 14 yr old's life would have caused her to have second thoughts? Certainly not popular culture, organizations like Planned Parenthood, and sizeable percentage of elected officials and judicial appointments. Having sex to begin with well that's a given, odd if she wasn't.

but this girl found herself in a position where perhaps all she understood was that her body was in great pain and she used her minimal ingenuity to come up with the extraction with scissors. At that point, she probably was looking at a ravaged infant body and perhaps thought in terms of ending his suffering. She had just had a horrible struggle, alone, with her own bodily suffering and now she was confronting another poor, suffering being.

Well, I guess that's possibly what was going through her mind, but we're not in a position to know. We can also think up some much less exonerating motives to ascribe to her that would have just as much call on us as your scenario.

"She had just had a horrible struggle, alone, with her own bodily suffering and now she was confronting another poor, suffering being."

Or, the 14 year old knew she was pregnant and lied to her mother about the pregnancy tests she was given. Her mother did nothing for her, preferring to look the other way, and probably assuming the girl would just go get an abortion. I mean, isn't that how they do it?

The daughter, meanwhile, planned all along to exercise her privacy by killing the baby as quickly as possible, either pre- or post-delivery. And after each attempt she checked to make sure she'd really succeeded. Yep, that did it.

She then tossed the stabbed and strangled baby in with the dirty clothes, assuming her mother would continue to play along. Assuming a tacit agreement was in place to simply dispose of the unwanted tissue mass with the rest of the garbage. I mean, isn't that how they do it?

That was the girl's big mistake, I suppose. Too much empathy. Too much trust. The baby? Oh, nevermind. It's dead.

Maybe our host couched this post in the terms she did to make us pro-lifers confront a dilemna.

To me the chilling description of checking for a pulse, finding one, and then cooly strangling the life from the baby should dictate a premeditated murder charge... but

... It is a general pro-life position that if we could again make abortion illegal we would not prosecute the mother in the event of an abortion -- it being our positon that she is a co-victim with the child. And we also posit as a moral point that killing the child in utero is no different than killing it ex utero.

If we are true to those convictions shouldn't allow for some mitigating sympathy for the child mother here -- or should we re-evaluate not prosecuting the aborting mother?

"I would assume there is plenty of pity for the baby, why even ask? I also pity the 14 year old for being raised by such a mother. However at 14 she should know right from wrong."

Who's saying the young girl doesn't know right from wrong? More's the pity, (and the horror), that a person can feel they have no choice, such that they do a terrible thing that they know is terrible as they're doing it, in order to escape some other more greatly feared consequence of their behavior.

Levi Starks said... Why all the fuss over "checking for a pulse" you wouldn't wast a bullet on an injured animal that you knew was already dead

It doesn't seem consistent with a 14 year old who just gave birth. But it does seem consistent with a detective understanding the need to substantiate the baby was alive and killed rather than stillborn.

I can have sympathy for people while acknowledging they made bad choices. She may have felt trapped or any number of terrible things; she still made a bad choice. The extent to which she is ultimately culpable is going to take more than a comment thread to come to. But, yes. I can have sympathy for both.

On checking for a pulse: I find it surprising that a 14-year-old, after giving birth, mind you, could even successfully find a pulse. From what I recall, it is actually kind of hard to do, even in optimal conditions, if you don't know what you're doing. So, even if she searched for a pulse, that doesn't mean she found one.

To place this within the context of being morally right or wrong, we must first define the context of our morality. Is it A) God given B) Intuitive (just something we're born with) C) based on societal norms

We can rule out A because a significant portion of the populate are atheistIf B then she judges only herselfif C then she's being judged by the ever changing continuum of relativism

The mother screwed up and called the cops. The cops are often "not there to help".So by ratting her daughter out after an epic fail as a mother denying her daughter was pregnant - getting no doctor or pregnancy counseling...daughter faces serious charges. And Mom should as well for reckless endagerment.

The girl may well walk on prosecutors or jury belief that there would have been a whole different outcome if the minor had received help and advice from ANYBODY!The mother ought to spend time behind bars.And the guy who impregnated her, if it was someone significantly older than her - some man - not a boy peer of say, 16...ought to join Mommy in manacles and orange jumpsuit.

And I am really surprised in Florida they splashed this young girls name and face on the news.

Levi Starks said...Why all the fuss over "checking for a pulse" you wouldn't wast a bullet on an injured animal that you knew was already dead

=============Yeah, you would. It is called putting a suffering, mortally wounded animal or human out of their misery.It is apparantly a natural instinct. (in humans and elephants, but not chimpanzees..or..obviously..cats)

If a mother wants to get rid of a fetus, it's none of the father's business. This was a full term baby and there is nothing a father can do to stop a mother from carrying a baby full term. If the father didn't want any responsiblity, he should not have engaged in conduct that could result in the birth of a full term baby.

I was kind of surprised that when I clicked on the story, it included a photograph of the defendant. My understanding is that typically a juvenile defendant usually isn’t named much less have their picture publicized. I wonder if this means she’s being charged as an adult.

If a mother wants to get rid of a fetus, it's none of the father's business. This was a full term baby and there is nothing a father can do to stop a mother from carrying a baby full term. If the father didn't want any responsiblity, he should not have engaged in conduct that could result in the birth of a full term baby.

who is obviously a victim of child abuse, parental neglect, and of statutory rape

Statutory rape, maybe. The other choices? Nothing obvious whatsoever.

Who's the father

Why is this so important? Unless you have evidence of rape (or statutory rape), this should have no bearing. What if it was a 14 year old boy? Do we hang him in the town square?

Years and years of feminist claptrap celebrating liberation, and people still want to get the person who got the girl "in trouble". Yet she's the one who strangled the life out of her own flesh and blood.

People expressing no sympathy for this girl and likening her to a cold blooded murderer or speaking flippantly of her "mood" (that's you early upthread Moose, you waste of bandwidth you), really are sorry excuses for human beings in their present states.

"Right now I am trying to figure out why a 14 year old child did not bring her problem to the attention of some adult."

Oh, please. Were you never 14? Do you not remember the confusion attendant to being 14, and, more pertinent, the embarrassment of one's changing body? Can you not imagine the shame of a young girl having to admit to her parent(s) that she is pregnant, which, more mortifying to the child, means admitting she's had sex?

How about fear? Ignorance? Not knowing who to turn to and fearing the reaction of whomever one chooses to turn to?

This is not to absolve the young girl of the enormity of her terrible act, but it is all too easy as an adult who has weathered some experience in life to sit in contemptuous judgement of an unformed adolescent in a literally life-changing, possibly desperate situation.

If this girl wanted to get an abortion or a sex change or something like that she'd be presented as able to make adult decisions, harrogate, and you know it.

I thought that the article would be more tragic about *her* but it's not. She's slouching around the house in huge clothes, fakes TWO pregnancy tests her mother makes her take, and she's the victim?

Sure, blame the Mom for respecting her privacy. But at 14 it's not as though Mom could hold her down and strip her baggy clothes off without being arrested or, for that matter, stand in the bathroom and watch her pee on the stick. Sure, now people can look back and say why didn't you stand in the toilet with your 14 year old daughter so you could visually verify the urine coming out of her bottom, but if she wasn't pregnant? The mom would get crucified.

It's long term and deliberate deception. True, we don't know why. And we don't know why she kept it a secret and then left the corpse in her room, unless she just figured she'd have time to get rid of it.

Did she figure she was protecting the father from a statutory rape charge? Maybe.

Every criminal on the face of the planet is a criminal because they made bad choices.

Callahan, you're a moron. Horrible shit like this, these sorts of situations, are not and were not "created" by a political position, but rather reflect that horrible shit like this is part of the human condition.

If it makes you "feel" better to blame Pro Choice advocates for the "environment" of a 14 year old girl being in a horrible predicament, go ahead and get your jollies. There are some that cannot accept that people often do not get what they deserve, and that often, there is no righteous, Huckabee-friendly narrative that will solve things.

In truth, this girl is not a cold blooded murderer; if you think of her that way there is something wrong with you. Similarly, the charge of first degree murder exemplifies retarded thinking at its most sublime height.

And if the prosecution's intention is not to charge her that way, but to use the charge as a way to manipulate her to plea to a lesser charge as an adult (or as a child, for that matter), then that is a pitch perfect representation of how rapacious our criminal justice system can be.

"So by ratting her daughter out after an epic fail as a mother denying her daughter was pregnant - getting no doctor or pregnancy counseling...daughter faces serious charges. And Mom should as well for reckless endagerment.

The girl may well walk on prosecutors or jury belief that there would have been a whole different outcome if the minor had received help and advice from ANYBODY!"

Cedarford, did you even click through?

Friends of the family talked to the mother, suggesting the big clothes might mean the girl was pregnant. The mother MADE HER take TWO pregnancy tests which the girl faked and then assured her mother that she wasn't pregnant. She didn't fake it once and mom gave up, she faked it twice.

As for those who say it doesn't matter who the father is, it matters a whole lot. If it was another 14 year old boy he probably wouldn't get in trouble, but if the father was an adult or older man (or relative) it explains the extreme efforts to keep the pregnancy a secret.

My reaction may say more about me than about anything else, but my first thought was:

What the hell is wrong with this girl's parents?

Having read the article... same reaction.

Snarky legal question: If a 14 year old pregnant girl is adult enough to consent to invasive surgical procedures (like late-term abortions) without notifying an adult... shouldn't she be tried as an adult?

Or could it be that fourteen-year-old girls shouldn't be treated like adults at all?

"In truth, this girl is not a cold blooded murderer; if you think of her that way there is something wrong with you."

You know this? How?

She could be a lot of things given the scant information we have, including a cold blooded killer.

The plea idea is an interesting one though. Maybe the prosecutor is trying to force a revelation of who the father is. Which, if true, probably means that the *suspected* father is an adult the girl is protecting.

==============People can spout stupid slogans like all life is equally precious and worth any financial cost and from a zygote to a born baby to feral Haitian cast out by her mammy because 11 other kids were all she could feed. From heroic efforts to save an 88 year old woman dying, wanting to die, and in pain from 3 terminal illnesses to keep her Belessedly Alive!! as long as possible with tubes and machine to the honor student son of a US Marine needing rescue services to get him out of his crashed car in a ravine.

Or that society should spend unlimited resources on all Beautiful, Precious Life! Life! Life! - here and globally - from us feeding all needy Pakistanis to putting half a million into chemo and open heart surgery to help extend Rutabaga Granny's Alzheimers dead brain life another 5 precious years.

But we won't. We don't do that already, and the CONCEIT we had that we had unlimited wealth and resources to help ever foreign nation with free food and 911 Services is going. That is now unsustainable. And so is wasted medical resources and the wasted tens of billions in dumb "lock 'em all up and pay the lawyers all they want" societal burdens.

But we won't. We don't do that already, and the CONCEIT we had that we had unlimited wealth and resources to help ever foreign nation with free food and 911 Services is going. That is now unsustainable.

Do you even see the danger in this type of philosophy? If you treat all life as equal, then there is no gray area; if you don't, then the standards will constantly change, and how far down the slippery slope will we travel?

You - you chew your nails. Off with your head. 5% body fat? The limit is 4%. Off with your head.

If it was a television episode the father would be her own father and the girl devoted to him because he treats her like a grown up lady and loves her best of all.

But the baby's DNA would prove that. Maybe. At least the relative part. On television shows the detectives trick or bully all the men into giving their DNA, but that might just be on television.

I realize that people want to think she was just *so* scared, but the thing is that she maintained it through being "found out", and that's unusual. Most kids would crack at the question "are you pregnant?" The rest would crack before the second pregnancy test.

If she couldn't tell her (horrible) mother why not the family friend who figured she was pregnant? Why not a counselor at school?

"If a mother wants to get rid of a fetus, it's none of the father's business. This was a full term baby and there is nothing a father can do to stop a mother from carrying a baby full term. If the father didn't want any responsiblity, he should not have engaged in conduct that could result in the birth of a full term baby."

I suppose one person's definition of "interesting" is objective reality's version of taking advantage of a traumatized minor who cannot possibly be in any position to make good choices.

Of course, if she is a victim of rape (statutory or otherwise) by an adult, the DA and others should try to get her to talk. But threatening to charge her with a capital crime if she doesn't? It's interesting that you find that "interesting," Synova.

And finally, it is very likely that even this callow motive masquerading as a search for justice, is not what is going on. The truth is likely the same old banality: they know the capital murder charge would never stick with a sane jury, so scare the girl into pleading down. Conviction gotten.

Because the truth matters and my feelings don't. Because I see no reason to make it about my feelings. Because I'm not emotionally dependent on Alex agreeing that I'm a soft-hearted person. Because pretending great feeling for someone I've never met and have no relationship to is obscene.

Or maybe I have gobs of empathy and can imagine just how traumatizing and confusing it would be, and how scared I'd be, and just how much pregnancy hormones destroy rationality... and maybe that falls short for the facts given in the article.

She doesn't seem to have behaved like a confused hormone addled frightened child.

Maybe the problem isn't that I can't put myself in her shoes. Maybe the problem is that I CAN.

1. She does have a father (Timothy Goodson) who noticed she was walking around all summer wrapped in a blanket2. Her mom noticed blood in the toilet and Cassidy told her she "accidentally" flushed the fetus during a miscarriage3. She said she did it because she was afraid of her parents' reaction adn that their "relationship would change". (What kid talks like that about their parents?)4. The mom told the sisters who then called the police (the mom did not).

Something is very wrong in the house. The daughter lies regularly and I think, so does the mother. The key really will be who the baby's father was. Mom and daughter probably were both in on it for whatever reason, maybe covering for each other, and the sisters thought it was bad enough to turn them in to protect the kid from an even worse situation.

Also, harrogate. I wasn't expressing approval. My opinion is that plea bargains coerce confessions and that coerced confessions are evil to the same level that confessions coerced by torture are evil. "Name your confederates" isn't as evil, I think, so long as there is other concrete evidence (such as being able to prove paternity). It's still part of the same process, though, and I think there are real problems with it.

If a mother wants to get rid of a fetus, it's none of the father's business. This was a full term baby and there is nothing a father can do to stop a mother from carrying a baby full term. If the father didn't want any responsiblity, he should not have engaged in conduct that could result in the birth of a full term baby.

Golly. I've been reading this thread in greater and greater disbelief (starting with the original post, which shocked me), but ...

carrie, a newborn baby is not a "fetus," and deliberately strangling a child to death is not "getting rid of a fetus." Should the father be named here, and object to the murder of his son, he would have exactly the same standing to object as any other human being would have to object to any murder.

By the way, if you are going to keep talking about the "mother" and the "father," you might reflect that the noun that ordinarily goes with these is "child."

How is any murder "any of our business"? Enh, another day, another dead person, who cares? Is that it? Do you feel like that about all fellow-persons who are deliberately strangled, or just a select set?

"My opinion is that plea bargains coerce confessions and that coerced confessions are evil to the same level that confessions coerced by torture are evil."

Finally, we agree on something.

"the real question is how is this any of our business?"

In spirit I agree with that too. Bottom line is, it's a damn shame we know who she is. Those responsible for making that information should be fired, and subjected to any civil litigation possible, and finally, should be shunned by people generally.

Although I suppose some will argue that it's our business because it's "interesting." How was Terri Shiavo's brain-dead body any of our business?

Once the state gets into the filing of charges, it becomes our business in a more serious way than, say, the Kardashians are.

"carrie, a newborn baby is not a "fetus," and deliberately strangling a child to death is not "getting rid of a fetus." Should the father be named here, and object to the murder of his son, he would have exactly the same standing to object as any other human being would have to object to any murder"

Not true. If this baby had survived a botched aborton, President Obama would be perfectly happy with the fetus being killed. He signed on to that again and again.

Bottom line is, it's a damn shame we know who she is. Those responsible for making that information should be fired, and subjected to any civil litigation possible, and finally, should be shunned by people generally.

As I said to Alex: Do you feel like that about everyone who admits to strangling someone, or just some?

At that point, she probably was looking at a ravaged infant body and perhaps thought in terms of ending his suffering ...

As sad, horrid, or perp justifying, as that may sound, there is some considerable truth to that idea. It isn't quibbling. Soldiers in combat can relate to it. The violence!...the the crushing reality that not all of the enemy are dead ... and doing something about it. Quickly, because you are moving on. Reality is once bullets fly, they can't be taken back, but not everyone dies immediately like in movies. They need help. It will never make to a daily report, other than as a KIA if necessary. It won't even be spoken of, even among other soldiers. Is it murder or mercy?

I never thought I'd ever find a reason to express the above thought in this day and age. But here we are...

How is what this 14 year old did any worse than what licensed doctors & nurses do in a Dilation and Extraction abortion procedure in 24 to 32 week period of gestation? The fetus, aka baby is alive, moving, hands and feet responding to motion, then the scissors go in to the skull and the arms and legs go stiff, then limp when the suction tube is hooked up to the penetrated skull. It then all goes in a bucket. Bucket or shoe box...the difference?

Did the infant feel pain? If we say no, how do we know that?

Man, I do not know all the answers, but I understand dying. As someone else said here, this is Honey Boo Boo culture....regardless of color.

How is this kid more guilty than the doctors who legally perform late term D & E procedures?

If this baby had survived a botched aborton, President Obama would be perfectly happy with the fetus being killed. He signed on to that again and again.

Well, not exactly. I think he tried not to go on record as opposing the bill, but did his best to ensure that it wasn't passed.

And, again, if it's alive and outside the womb, it's not a fetus; it's a child. If it was born in this country, it's an American citizen. Throwing it in a dumpster, or a high school trash can, or in a repository for "medical waste" is attempted murder to my mind; actual murder if (as usually happens) it results in a dead child. Strangling it ... well, whoever up-thread said that if a 14-year-old boy did that to a puppy, we'd be seeing a lot more outrage here is right.

Homicide is the business of society to oppose. When society considers that none of its business, society is in the process of ceasing.

Harrogate:

The pro-legal-abortion forces have chanted "choice!" and "it's just tissue!" and so forth for many decades. When folks preach their message, they can't be shocked that they might actually succeed.

The same folks even oppose a law banning partial-birth abortions; and our President opposed a law mandating life-saving care for a victim of a failed abortion.

And, fwiw, I have tremendous concern for the 14-year-old girl in this situation.

She's committed a crime she must live with. And she must come to grips with it, and answer for it. And she has an immortal soul. God help her if her "friends" try to protect her from facing the reality of this situation, and instead continue infantilizing her with the "poor thing" trope.

I feel that teen pregnancy is an in-family thing and the rest of the world should mind it's own fucking business. Now if a stranger murders another stranger that's our business.

How many other "in-family things" are we supposed to mind our "own fucking business" about? How old does a child need to be before it intrudes on your moral horizon? Two? Three? Six? Ten? Is it none of our fucking business if a father sodomizes his son, because, after all, it's "in-family"? Is a husband beating his wife (or the other way about), or a wife killing her husband (or the other way about) "none of our fucking business," because it's all "in-family?"

That you treat the deliberate killing of a fellow-citizen as just some private matter about "teen pregnancy" is appalling. The child here had the same rights as you or I do, and was deliberately done to death, by a killer whose identity is known. That is all our business.

As an aside: When Fr. Martin Fox isn't busy protesting capital punishment the military industrial complex and torture and the neglect of the poor and the World Bank &c., he likes to come to Althouse to harp on social issues.

He was there shoulder-to-shoulder, for example, when that great decent statesman, "Father Timothy," made all his eloquent speeches about protecting the poor and refusing communion to Republicans who support torture and press for more war. Natch.

When females kill their babies, I suspect it is because they don't love or respect the father of the baby, for whatever reason. Sewers underneath the brothels of ancient Rome were filled with infant skeletons. A woman who really loves a man and gives herself to him, wants to have his baby, even if it is inconvenient.

As an aside: When Fr. Martin Fox isn't busy protesting capital punishment the military industrial complex and torture and the neglect of the poor and the World Bank &c., he likes to come to Althouse to harp on social issues.

When harrogate isn't busy hoarding commas, and giving the lavish personal attention to the poor that Fr. Fox has apparently not supplied to his own satisfaction, he likes to come here and denounce Fr. Fox for "harping on social issues," a term apparently so capacious that it now encompasses thinking that strangling a child ought to be treated as a crime.

Should anyone strangle you, harrogate, I promise that I shall treat it as a murder, and not a "social issue."

Michelle you are mistaken. Barack Obama as a State Senator voted three times against a bill that would have protected a fetus that was alive after an abortion. Once in committee and three times on the floor.

You can find the facts on the well know liberal organ FactCheck.org. Even these partisans admit the facts.

Obama would not extend the protection of the law to a baby that survived an abortion. His reasons don't matter. He lied when he said he would accept the federal rules when they were in fact repeated in the state law in question.

FR Fox ...the combat scenario was merely the stage for the idea of a form of murderous sympathy as a means to remove that which is discomforting to us from our presence (because we caused it) as well as relive suffering we observe.

Anyone who has had to put down a beloved dog or horse when veterinary means were not available would understand as well, I think. There is a sense of relief when it is over, coupled with deep remorse.

Maybe I'm not saying it well. It isn't a common topic for most folks, and I wish it weren't for me.

"The violence!...the the crushing reality that not all of the enemy are dead ... and doing something about it. Quickly, because you are moving on."

I know that soldiers are not *supposed* to kill a wounded or captured or otherwise not still shooting back person. I can entirely empathize with a number of reasons someone may want to, though, including to end suffering.

And maybe it's a splendid analogy in the end after all. Because "I tried to kill this person but botched it" isn't much of an excuse to end suffering if the *first* part of that isn't sanctioned.

Suppose we were talking about that 14 year old boy and the puppy... "I stood on it's neck until it suffocated" can't be justified by "I beat it with a 2x4 but it was still breathing and the only right thing to do was to end it's suffering."

And maybe it's a splendid analogy in the end after all. Because "I tried to kill this person but botched it" isn't much of an excuse to end suffering if the *first* part of that isn't sanctioned.

A philosophical problem arises here:

D & E procedures are legally sanctioned. So the case of this 14 year old is about who, not what or why.

I'm not sure there is an answer. I do know the response I cite is not about "botching" anything (which I don't think you meant literally), it is a sudden realization that a consequence exists that an individual did not anticipate.

I ask seriously, for my own reasons. Thank you for giving an answer as best you could.

The only time I ever see you on *this* blog, which is the only place I ever would see you, is when you come to a thread to caterwaul about teh gays and traditional marriage, or abortion, or some such predictable social red meat.

When, however, Ann has on multiple occasions rhetorically fellatiated Ryan's budget or the Wall Street crowd, you are nowhere a'tall to be found. What a shocker.

I don't give a rat's ass about your "homilies" any more than I do Daddy Tim's declared "nonpartisanship." Like most if not all people who read this blog, the only contact I will ever have with you will be what you write here. And here, you sound like Pat Fucking Robertson.

Ari, I hadn't seen your second post right before mine when I wrote that. I'd probably answer a little bit differently. I've never been in combat, of course, but I grew up on a farm with the life and death experiences that implies, which relates almost not at all to the former. Ask someone who's been there about the combat scenario and don't ask in front of civilians because they won't understand. That's what I have to say about that.

And I can certainly imagine the girl giving birth, jamming that scissors up there, and being presented with the horror and panic of the situation she found herself in. Including the horror of realizing she caused it. Why do people hit-and-run? Horror and panic. What I can't really see is a scenario where she wasn't already planning to kill the baby once she delivered it.

I notice that you often respond to my comments, but invariably, your responses wind up being some version of "a person is not writing the comments that you are writing." I am not sure exactly what your issue is, but it's evident you have one. I doubt you will bother to read what follows (if you have read this far), but what the hell. what does it matter who reads inside these comments anyway, in the end.

In this case it seems you think Andrew Sullivan was the first person, or is the only person to point out this issue with respect to Catholic officials and American politics? Or maybe that Sully somehow owns this position? But of course that is laughable.

One thing would be clear to any reader not biased going in: you don't make anything resembling a point in your response to me. That's par the course for so many yahoos on this comment board. And for you, more and more, that's par the course as well.

FWIW, I do not agree with these things you imply. Indeed, I think that independent of Andrew Sullivan or anyone else's viewpoint: if one is given to a mindset that John Kerry should be denied communion but Paul Ryan is a blessed member of the holy family, then you have no claim to anything other than a rank partisan angle on your religion.

And to be fair, our good Father here, did not claim he is not a rank partisan. Nor did I say he claimed as much.

But he joints several other morons here on this comment thread, in an effort to add momentum to turning this into an abortion thread. In an effort to blame this horrible happening on the pro choice movement. He is, for this, revealing himself a sickening pissant.

Perhaps even more sickening to take the "this is about abortion!" wail, as if in the name of some religion of love. That, along with his little "homilies" of social justice and peace addenda is just too much sanctimony to stomach. Pissants usually are hard to stomach though, I would imagine.

[a]nd our President opposed a law mandating life-saving care for a victim of a failed abortion.

[you:] Sorry, that looks like harping on social issues to me. It looks like he's (shocker!) joining those who want to turn this into an abortion thread.

But, harrogate, how can it be an abortion thread when it's about the killing of a living, born child?

It ought not to be controversial that a newborn infant is as much a human being as any other living person. That denying medical care to such a one, especially as an infant is helpless, ought to be a crime. That killing one deliberately ought to be treated as homicide, as would killing anyone else be.

Baron Zemo turns out to be right about the IL bill to mandate that babies unfortunately (!) born alive in botched abortions be treated, as common humanity dictates, like ordinary neonatal patients and given the same sort of care a "wanted" baby would, as opposed to the "drop it in a closet and check back a few hours later" technique that some Chicago nurses reported. I'd thought he just sat it out, but evidently not so.

Why, I do believe you have a rather high opinion of yourself. "My words are true and cause discomfort to those in violation of the truth" or some such rot, says the big holy important man to himself over a sandwich.

I love it, really. It's very like a character out of Joyce, if Joyce were alive and writing today. But relax. You didn't upset me or anyone else. You just are full of shit is all.

I can understand why you'd rather make me the issue. Confronting the obscene offspring of the "choice" coverup for baby murder -- which you have chosen to identify with -- is pretty awful. So much more diverting to attack me.

You all put say I'm a partisan. Really? Which presidential candidate am I supporting then?

It's not a story about abortion. I never said it was one because... wait for it in case you missed it the first time... it's not one. At this point, however, the *thread* might well be described as an abortion thread, because so many idiots want to make it about Obama and the "culture of legalization" that somehow caused this tragedy.

Your original little swat at me was absurd on its face because you were complaining that I somehow wanted to turn the girl's killing of this baby into a "social" issue. But if you follow the thread you will see that when writing my own thoughts on the matter, I treated it like a criminal justice issue, a matter of law. I said the girl is not a cold blooded killer and that it is horrible as hell to charge her as an adult, for a capital crime. And those conclusions I reached, based on the facts of the story as I see them.

Other than that, all I've done here is point out the ridiculousness of the ranters and ravers that here, are ranting and raving.

Synova ... thanks for your response. It is a struggle to find examples that "civilians" will understand, let alone admit to in their own lives. You will have to trust me that I don't think it is solely a military issue. I said as much as introduction to my ideas.

That said, I'm not proposing that this is "about abortion" as one or two commenters have said, referring to I'm not sure whom. Nor is about military combat experience...definitely not about that, and you hit that nail on the head with your comment about "hit & run" accidents. My reference to domestic animals was unclear...I meant when you feel responsible for the injury that in turn requires euthanasia by any means at hand.

In short, I was trying to expand on the philosophical, moral, and emotional premise of Althouse's remark. Your answers have been very honest, which is more than many very nice people can manage on this topic. I am no exception.

Your original little swat at me was absurd on its face because you were complaining that I somehow wanted to turn the girl's killing of this baby into a "social" issue.

Which "original little swat"? This one? The first comment I addressed to you?

----------------------

[you:] Bottom line is, it's a damn shame we know who she is. Those responsible for making that information should be fired, and subjected to any civil litigation possible, and finally, should be shunned by people generally.

[me:] As I said to Alex: Do you feel like that about everyone who admits to strangling someone, or just some?

------------------------

That was the whole thing.

Obviously, any fair reader would conclude that I was complaining that you wanted to turn this homicide into a "social issue." I mean, it's right there in plain text, isn't it?

Actually, I do not mention "social issues" (apart from the "not killing people" one), but you do. You want anyone who mentions that a child was deliberately killed to be fired, sued, and/or shunned, whichever is applicable. I'd say that would be making this a "social issue."

Of course it's an abortion thread. The young woman exercised "choice" and autonomy over her body. She faced a problem pregnancy and dealt with it according to her conscience. She made a difficult decision about "terminating" the (insert euphemism of choice for baby). And President Obama, and everyone else for legalized baby-killing, "respects her to make the right decision."

She was pregnant and now she's not; and she has fetal tissue that needed to be disposed of. How is this not an abortion?

I meant to make a distinction between a fetus that can be legally aborted and killing a full term baby, which is murder. However, there are extenuating circumstances when the mother is 14and I have great sympathy for her. I think that the father shares some of the guilt here too--maybe he shouldn't be prosecuted for murder but some lesser charge would be appropriate in my opinioin and if there is no lesser charge that fits then there should be one when the "mother" is only 14 years old.

No, I got your point in that quote; and in the end I DO understand why it's gone so very public. Though I do disagree with you of course, because I do think it a shame that it's become this. I think that the thing is horrible enough without hordes of people writing about her and talking about her on television. And I don't at ALL know what good it does anyone at all, or any cause at all, for this kid, who must be in a state far divorced from stable or rational (let alone adult), to be thus spotlighted.

But more, I was talking about this thing that you wrote:

"When harrogate isn't busy hoarding commas, [My apologies for the commas btw; they're a fetish] and giving the lavish personal attention to the poor that Fr. Fox has apparently not supplied to his own satisfaction, he likes to come here and denounce Fr. Fox for "harping on social issues," a term apparently so capacious that it now encompasses thinking that strangling a child ought to be treated as a crime.

Should anyone strangle you, harrogate, I promise that I shall treat it as a murder, and not a 'social issue.'"

See, Fox, had gone all "THIS IS ABOUT ABORTION!!" And I called bullshit on the harping on social issues in that context. And then in the comment above quoted, it looked to me like you were accusing me of doing the thing Fox had done.

I meant to make a distinction between a fetus that can be legally aborted and killing a full term baby, which is murder. However, there are extenuating circumstances when the mother is 14and I have great sympathy for her. I think that the father shares some of the guilt here too--maybe he shouldn't be prosecuted for murder but some lesser charge would be appropriate in my opinioin and if there is no lesser charge that fits then there should be one when the "mother" is only 14 years old.

I am surprised that they released her name, photo, and street address. She's a minor.

Let's say a sympathetic jury acquits her. Will she always be known as that baby killer girl? Will she be elected homecoming queen as a prank by her peers? Will she be on stage accepting her crown, and be doused with buckets of blood from above?

Will future employers screening applicants find this story?

Seems to me like she'd have to move and change her name, or she'll never be able to transcend this published story.

Do the police think that a sympathetic jury will likely acquit her, so they're going to pre-emptively punish her by publishing her name, address, and photo?

Doesn't that put her in danger? Men who like teens know she's fair game.

I hate what she did, but I also hate that the police put it all out there with her name, photo, and address.